I am the new Cubmaster of a Cub Scout Pack, and I am working to eliminate the need for paper sign up sheets for recruiting this year.
Our Pack already runs on a lot of Google Services, including using Google groups as our mailing list for our primary source of information, so I was hoping that there is a way to have parents fill out a Google Form and that person automatically be added to the Google Group and receive a Welcome Email with a PDF attachment.
This way, we can have a big printed QR code that people can scan to get to the sign up form, and the leaders assisting can use our phones for folks that may not have one with them.
I’m also open to using other products or services if they would work better. This is my first time really managing a group like this and I’m not sure what kind of communication and group management products exist.
I think signing people up to access a group might be tricky. Does filling out a Google Form necessitate having a Google account - I think that’s still required for a Google group, but to be honest I haven’t really used Google groups in well over a decade
On filling out a form, sending them a welcome e-mail with instructions of how to access the group might be an option.
I would consider not sending an attachment, but sending a link to the pack. That way, no matter when someone picks up the e-mail link, they always get access to the latest pack. I used to do that with the martial arts club I used to run and it makes keeping everything up to date so much simpler!
I don’t know how applicable this might be, but in the UK, the scout group I help out with uses a dedicated solution, and all of the leaders across the entire region swear by it - having tried to roll and maintain their own solutions in the past. Having used it myself (both as a parent and the unit quartermaster), I would say it isn’t perfect, but it does simplify everything significantly, especially since GDPR came into effect! So much so I think it was up to >95% usage across the country, which I think says a lot about how useful it is.
It does seem focused on the UK, and I wasn’t able to find anything equivalent on Google for the US. But, it may be worth reaching out to them to see if they have any suggestions. I strongly suspect it won’t be the first time they have had an overseas enquiry to see if they know of an equivalent in the US.
